Most people eat some combination of food that is good for them and food that tastes good. Finding the balance between the two is a lifelong journey. This is the story of that struggle.

advice

March 31, 2015

I have a question for you all today: If the amount of "added sugars" in a product were added to the food label in teaspoons and not grams, would this impact your decision to buy/eat that food? For example, if a soup can showed that the added sugars = 3 teaspoons, would that effect your purchase, yes or no?

Consumers have wanted sugars to be separated out between sugars vs. added sugars on nutrition labels. During that interim frustration, we've seen added sugar measured out in teaspoons, a much different unit of measurement than grams.

A push by the dietitian who posted the question above on Facebook speaks to a larger issue: whether we should change the measurement of added sugars from grams to teaspoons.

The question isn't well-worded, though the dietitian got positive responses. The better question is whether those same consumers want to do math every time they read a nutrition label.

Listing every other category in one measurement (grams) and then placing in added sugars under a different measurement (teaspoons) is destined to confuse even math experts in a grocery store.

Let's start with one of my favorite subjects and not one for most people: math.

How many grams are in a teaspoon? 4. Though some Internet sources say 5. A gram is a mass measurement; a teaspoon is a volume measurement. Preciseness — something you really need — won't work here.

Let's assume 4 grams per teaspoon for the moment.

We have a pretend product with 40 g of carbohydrates and 26 g of sugars. The label reads 4 teaspoons of added sugars (included in the 26 g of sugars). How much of the sugars are added sugars?

If your head hurts to figure this out, and your kids aren't around to help you with the math, imagine doing this in the grocery store.

The answer is that 16 of the 26 grams are added sugars, and 10 of the 26 grams are milk/fruit sugars.

Since a gram is a smaller measurement than a teaspoon, we don't actually know that we are getting 16 grams of added sugars.

4 grams = 1 teaspoon and therefore 16 grams = 4 teaspoons. The serving could have 14 grams of added sugar = 3.5 teaspoons, which would be rounded up to 4 teaspoons. 17 grams of added sugar = 4.25 teaspoons, which would be rounded down to 4 teaspoons.

So 4 teaspoons of added sugar on a label could equal anywhere from 14-17 grams of added sugar per serving.

Measuring in grams gives food companies an incentive to reduce added sugars. If a food company has a product with 14 g of added sugars per serving, the teaspoon model allows the company to add 3 g of added sugars per serving and not get penalized.

If a container has 4 servings, that would reflect an additional 12 g of added sugars.

The teaspoon argument could point out that labels could contain fractions of teaspoons. Imagine the math horror if we went with 3.5 teaspoons vs. 4 teaspoons or if a label used the fraction 3½ that would be very small to read on a nutrition label.

We have to remember that a teaspoon of sugar is close to 4 grams, so even that measurement is off. If a liquid sweetener source (we're looking at you, high-fructose corn syrup) is used, that throws off the conversion as well (mass/volume difference).

Math will still need to be involved for those who have come to measure in teaspoons of sugar rather than grams. The American Heart Association recommends limiting the amount of added sugars: for most women, 6 teaspoons of sugar; for men, 9 teaspoons.

With a 4/1 conversion, men can handle 36 grams of added sugar; women, 24 grams of added sugar. So the 3 grams difference in that 14-17 grams scenario matters.

Added sugars should have been a part of the label long before now. Measuring sugar in teaspoons is fine for coffee or tea. Using teaspoons for added sugars in a sea of grams threatens to blow back some of the potential gains of added sugars on a nutrition label.

The more confused the consumer is, the more likely they won't use the information provided. And then the food companies win.

Cheese is one of those foods that everyone says they love, but cheesy goodness doesn't always involve cheese. Nacho cheese sauce is considered cheese. Pasteurized process cheese food is legally considered cheese by the FDA because it contains 51% cheese.

Your childhood was likely filled with "singles," individually wrapped slices of what you were told was cheese. You were also told that the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny exists and that you weren't an accident.

Giving up that tradition can be difficult if you fall into nostalgia or still eat like a child. If you have children, you feel like you are giving them a part of your childhood by giving them Kraft Singles.

How about giving them real cheese?

We hear the stories: "You can't give kids real cheese because the flavor is too strong for them." "Cheese is high in fat so kids need to cut back."

Cheese has flavor because it has fat; this is a dairy product.

When I was a child, and my peers were loving the Singles, I was complaining that the blue cheese dressings were too mild. Even as an adult, I get a secret supply of blue cheese from a vendor at the farmers market that is extra old, extra strong. No labels — that is how secret this is — just goodness.

As we've learned from other food categories, the more flavor and fat you have, the less we need to eat to be satisfied. With good cheese, 2 oz. can be plenty. With nacho cheese sauce, you could dip with chips all day long and not feel full.

French kids eat more good cheese and are much less obese.

If you have children whose palates are not as sophisticated as mine, there are plenty of sufficiently bland tasting real cheeses. If cheddar is too much, go with Swiss. Need to go further to Blandsville? Monterey Jack and mozzarella will do.

Test your kids: give them a variety of cheeses and see which ones work. You can help them figure out their palates for cheese and possibly other foods based on the results.

Children need fat to grow. They are more sensitive to need flavor as a prerequisite in food. They don't have to eat cheese to grow up. But if cheese is an option, teach them to explore the many facets of the world of cheese. Just make sure that they get real cheese; your children (and adults too) deserve the best.

March 20, 2015

If you go all in for the adage "you are what you eat," would you also "eat what you are"?

Cecilia Westbrook, an MD/PhD student, put that to the test by making homemade yogurt using her own vaginal bacteria.

The key is lactobacillus, a bacteria commonly found in yogurt and a healthy vagina. Sounds like a new angle for Jamie Lee Curtis and her yogurt obsession.

Westbrook reportedly described the finished product as having a sour taste like "Indian yogurt" that went well with blueberries.

Vagina yogurt: strong enough for a man, but made from women.

Vaginal bacteria is a great way to make truly homemade yogurt, but using cow or goat milk doesn't click with yogurt from within a woman. To make a truly homemade yogurt, you could use breast milk if you want to make a yogurt from what women produce.

In a country where raw milk makes the mainstream world squeamish, you'll never see vagina yogurt in the stores, even without breast milk.

Still, imagine if vagina yogurt with breast milk was available in a grocery store and advertised on TV.

It's a play on those classic mother-daughter ads where the daughter "isn't so fresh" and the mother could tell her how she needs to get clean enough to produce her own truly homemade yogurt.

You could have a hippie-styled older woman who points out the natural goodness of vagina yogurt and breast milk. No artificial colors, flavors — nothing that a woman can't naturally produce herself.

A young pregnant woman who only wants what is best for her baby. She plans to breastfeed her child, but for those times where she can't provide the breast milk, vagina yogurt with breast milk is the next best thing to being there.

A sensitive man who loves his woman and wants to understand her better can feel closer with a serving of vagina yogurt with breast milk.

We've written about yogurt marketed to men. Yogurt has been traditionally marketed to women; can't get more in touch with women than to have a yogurt made from women.

Vagina yogurt with breast milk is organic, locally grown, locally sourced, and a truly natural food. Even if that sounds too appetizing, you've eaten worse and a lot less healthy.

March 19, 2015

"Turns out the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is an academy in the same way this (Kraft Singles) is cheese." — Jon Stewart, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

You see a label on a food that says "Kids Eat Right." Even if you are paying attention in a grocery store with your kids, you might not take too much time to look into what the label means.

If you do look closer and you see that the label is brought to you by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, you would be justified in thinking this was an endorsement of the food.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has a program called Kids Eat Right. The organization says food companies that help with that program get rewarded with a "Kids Eat Right" label on their products.

As horrible as that idea sounds, the only thing that would be worse is picking a really horrible example as the first food to get the label. Enter Kraft Singles.

Kraft Singles were traditionally allowed to positioned itself as American cheese when it was "pasteurized process cheese food" -- a category that only allows for 51% cheese yet could be called cheese. Now Kraft Singles are legally classified as "pasteurized prepared cheese product." The FDA prohibited Kraft from referring to the product as "pasteurized process cheese food," a step higher in the food chain but a long way from actual cheese.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) — formerly the American Dietetic Association — is no stranger to corporate tie-ins with food companies. The AND says the label is not an endorsement, though Kraft said this was an endorsement. The label does walk and talk like an endorsement from an organization of dietitians.

(Full disclosure: I once interviewed for a job at the organization, back when it was the American Dietetic Association. I did not get the position.)

This "endorsement" against "pasteurized process cheese food" comes from Sargento, a company that makes real cheese.

In the weeks leading up to this embarrassing AND/Kraft Singles PR disaster, Sargento has been running an ad advertising 100% cheese: "Real cheese people don't eat pasteurized process cheese food" and how pasteurized process cheese food is "only required to contain 51% real cheese."

Remember that Kraft Singles isn't even good enough to be "pasteurized process cheese food."

If the dietitians that I know were setting the rules, the AND would put stickers on fruit and vegetables containers that say "Kids Eat Right." But those companies don't have the resources to advertise, much less put in enough money to sway the interests of the AND. Kraft does.

Some dietitians are fighting back with a petition to the AND to get the organization to rescind the policy. They don't want their hard work to be overshadowed by a financial arrangement that looks like fake cheese is getting rewarded.

There is a divide among dietitians. Some dietitians work for PR agencies that represent food companies or directly for the food companies. They use their dietary knowledge and expertise as a cover for food companies to try to convince us a food is healthier than its actual reality.

Dietitians are good and bad; human like the rest of us. Doctors and nurses are also good and bad, but they aren't working for companies that are trying to do the opposite of what they learned in their education.

I know dietitians in both camps; I find them to be good people. But most people don't know a dietitian. Many people who could use the help of a dietitian aren't sure where to turn. A lot of those dietitians who could help can't because they work for PR agencies and food companies with designs to embrace strategies to convince consumers to eat a particular processed food.

One major resource where people can go to find a dietitian is the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Yes, we see the irony.

Dietitians who want to work with people to help them have been overshadowed by corporate food interests for some time. Those dietitians are trapped in a tidal wave of messages from advertising, food companies tricks on the front labels of products and one particularly bad trick on the ingredient label.

The Kraft Singles controversy is an extreme example in the desire for some dietitians to suck up to large food companies. But the dietitian world shouldn't pretend that this is the only problem.

March 10, 2015

Organic is one of the more volatile words in the improved eating spectrum. Those who praise organic love finding the word whenever they shop for food. Those who scorn people who want better quality food especially turn their noses away from organic labels.

The reality, of course, lies somewhere where farmers practice organic but can't afford to be official to fruits that benefit from being organic while others don't have as much benefit.

I don't buy organic because I live in America and have so many choices for safe, wholesome and cheap food. I don't think that our food production system is perfect, but it's pretty darn good! I believe in the system that provides us with these choices, so I choose to support conventional production when possible. One of those choices is organic but not for her. Her bullet point would be true 45 years ago. The push for organic isn't as much about pesticides but working toward having food taste like it did 45 years ago with more nutrition than we get now.

I don't buy organic because I know many farmers and producers personally and know that they care about the environment that our food is produced in. They have to be careful with everything that they are stewards for, from the air to the soil, water and produce. A lot of farmers that she knows may be practicing organic strategy but can't afford to certify organic. So even if the labels aren't there, she might be buying organic. Since she buys conventional production when possible, chances are she isn't buying from these farmers.

I don't buy organic because I know what pesticides are and they do what they say — control pests! Our government sets standards and controls for the use of pesticides in food production and the levels that are safe for even the youngest humans to consume! My dad is a farmer and he had to take a strenuous licensing exam in order to utilize pesticides on his farm.The person who advises him on pesticide decisions had to take about 10 of those exams. Organic growers control pests in other ways. They don't involve pesticides. Funny how many people in this group don't trust the government on a lot of issues, but they trust the FDA and USDA to do the right thing. Paranoia is sometimes justified but her paranoia needs a 180.

I don't buy organic because I understand the science behind it. When I see a recall or new labeling on food products I commonly purchase, I check it out from a reliable and scientific source. When dairy products boast they are produced from cows not treated with rBST, I know that BST is a naturally occurring protein hormone utilized in dairy production to increase milk production in cows so that more milk can be produced from the same number of cows. I also know that it's kind of sad that producers can't utilize this technology that helps keep milk prices lower for consumers because consumers demanded that it not be used anymore. I doubt many of the people who demanded that change in the industry knew that BST is species specific and does not change the hormone levels or affect growth in humans because it is a bovine hormone. She starts out talking about rBST and spends the rest of the time talking about BST because she understands the science (sarcasm). Her primary concern is about price since organic costs more. It's okay to not buy organic based on price, but you are getting a better product.

I don't buy organic because I don't believe it is fair marketing. When people think organic they are thinking of small farms on the side of the road that are environmentally conscious and what not, right? A lot of organic produce is grown on huge corporate farms just like the conventional counterpart. When pests threaten to take over the crop, it is just transferred over to conventional practices and loses organic labeling rights. So it's basically the same thing, only pricier at times, so I don't choose to support it. Given the steps in the process to have the right to be labeled "organic," the organic products have earned that label. Some organic food is grown on larger farms but still being grown organic, so size of the farm doesn't matter. As to farms jumping easily back and forth between organic, given the steps in the process, skipping easily back and forth doesn't happen easily. Whatever she might think about organic, they aren't "basically the same thing."

This person knows farmers personally — her dad is one of them — but she seeks out conventional production when possible. If you personally knew a farmer, wouldn't you trust their food?

She applies how her friends farm to large-scale farms that don't care as much about the environment (e.g., runoff from farms) yet those farmers aren't likely to be the problem.

Her concerns are organic being more expensive are a fair point, though the product is often better quality with higher nutrition, especially dairy and meat products). Few people fall into exclusively organic, even if they get a lot of the press. Most shoppers who buy some products that are organic buy many more that aren't. This doesn't factor the number of farm products that are being raised organic but can't afford to certify.

Organic is still in the sharp minority of food products consumed in the United States but she sees organic as practicing biased marketing.

March 04, 2015

The previous evening, I ate dinner at Jungle Jim's restaurant. Everyone had looked up at me when I entered, a sort of ripple traveling through the room, heads lifting, necks turning, only to subside as I sat down at one of the tables. The walls were clad in bamboo, there were a few plastic palms strewn about and some of the dishes had jungle-related names. The contrast to the dark and empty town outside, the freezing cold air, which made it painful to breathe, the snow and the vast sky full of stars, couldn't have been bigger. Several TVs were on with the sound muted, showing a hockey game between Sweden and Russia, a semifinal for the World Junior Championship. Everyone in the place, except the waiter, was fat, some of them so fat that I kept having to look at them. I had never seen people that fat before. The strange thing was that none of them looked as if they were trying to hide their enormous girth; quite the opposite, several people were wearing tight T-shirts with their big bellies sticking out proudly.

I couldn't quite figure out a lot of the dishes, all those chicken wings and barbecue. I didn't know what went with what, and was none the wiser after checking out what other people were eating, because they seemed to be having myriad dishes, served in baskets; some tables were entirely covered with them, some even stacked on top of one another. So I picked a spaghetti dish — that I could relate to. It consisted mainly of cheese, and tasted like something I could have cooked myself, back when I was still a student and would mix myself something out of whatever was in the fridge.

This evening, I ate at a place called Pizza Delight. It was located in the Viking Mall, and I was the only guest. The waitress, a girl of maybe 18, seemed permanently amazed at everything I said and did. I ordered a pizza; she asked me several times whether that was all I was having. Yes, I said. When it was brought to my table and I started to eat, she stood behind the counter, glancing at me surreptitiously. I knew I was doing something wrong, but I had no idea what.

Karl Ove Knausgaard stirred some controversy over remarks he made about how large the people were in a northern Newfoundland restaurant.

"Yawn," you might wonder. Here's an European criticizing how North Americans eat. Dog bites man. No story here.

You could also make the case that Knausgaard wrote a really horrible story for The New York Times. The saga over why he doesn't have a drivers license and the chase to get one is more pathetic than interesting.

St. Anthony, Newfoundland, is a remote city in northern Newfoundland, hundreds of kilometers away from St. John's, the largest city in Newfoundland and Labrador. As Knausgaard notes, you can see Labrador from there.

Even in the United States, there is a sharp contrast between obesity rates in cities versus suburbs versus rural areas. Even in Maritimes and Newfoundland terms, St. Anthony is pretty far north. Limited windows of reasonably warm weather, plus Knausgaard is there in the winter time, and that can add up to high obesity rates.

Knausgaard could have made a contrast between Newfoundland and his home country of Sweden with similar geographical conditions. Are people in northern Sweden more obese than southern Swedes? We won't find that out from Knausgaard.

Jungle Jim's has an extremely broad menu to an almost ridiculous standpoint. If it's food, you can find it at Jungle Jim's.

I have never been to Sweden, but my first time in a restaurant in Sweden could be similar to Knausgaard's experience. He was confused by "a lot of the dishes, all those chicken wings and barbecue." I would be confused by pickled herring or other Swedish delights. However, I would jump into those dishes to experience what this country would be like. Pickled herring might not be my cup of tea, but in Sweden, it might be pretty good.

(I'm using pickled herring as a symbolic dish. I don't want to be reduced down to Knausgaard's level of writing.)

Knausgaard made an odd dish by picking the Chicken Linguine Carbonara, unless he wanted to pick an extreme to make a point. In reading his writing, he doesn't seem to think at that level. But in traveling somewhere new, people often make poor choices from restaurant menus.

Knausgaard would have been better off asking what the specialty was to get a true flavor of where he was.

In Knausgaard's other major Newfoundland food observation, he ordered a pizza. The waitress "asked me several times whether that was all I was having." That could simply be the difference in customs. In North American restaurants, servers are often trained to make sure people don't want more. She could have wondered if he wanted a salad, or possibly breadsticks or chicken wings.

Perhaps a North American might go to Sweden and wonder why the server didn't ask if they wanted more food.

We also don't know whether Knausgaard observed obesity patterns in his other stays: St. John's, Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland, and Minnesota. Would Knausgaard be more repulsed by the American south than rural Newfoundland?

North Americans are at a huge disadvantage in the obesity battle versus Europeans. Some of that is food regulation, but Europeans get better subsidies in terms of health care and public transportation. Cultural differences account for differences in food portions.

Even if you are biased against Europe or Europeans, what North America is doing with food, exercise, and obesity has gone horribly wrong. Even if Knausgaard is not eloquent in his take on North American eating habits, he does have a point.

"Eat to live" makes way more sense than "live to eat." In a small town such as St. Anthony, Jungle Jim's could be the place to see your neighbors, especially in the winter. Stereotypically, Europeans would tend to do that more in cafes than restaurants, offering up fewer temptations.

Using restaurants as entertainment is way more of a North American ritual than an European one. Take advantage of eating out, but don't go off the deep end. If you aren't sure where the line is, try "Capped with mixed cheese & Parmesan."

February 27, 2015

Some of our food sensibilities run really deep. Food companies using nostalgia have a much easier time bringing us back. However, the problem lies when we aren't getting what we truly yearn for from way back when.

Little Debbie's is using nostalgia in its latest campaign, with childhood versions reminding adults how they were once children who would enjoy Little Debbie's treats.

In the chocolate cupcakes commercial, the younger version of the woman is there "reminding you how things used to be. How you'd have a Little Debbie whenever you finished cleaning your room or finished a book report."

The woman continues the thought process: "Or finished a garden."

"You've earned it," said the girl.

The tagline is "Your love for Little Debbie is something you never outgrow."

Let's pretend the person in the commercial is your humble narrator. Let's see how the conversation should really go.

Younger Self: "I'm here to remind you how things used to be. How you'd have a Little Debbie whenever you came home from school after the horrible cafeteria lunches or finished piano practice."

Current Self: "Yeah. Back then, I was starving for calories. Eating the treats was just to make up for lost calories at lunchtime. Now, I'm definitely not starving for calories."

Current Self: Look where that lifetime emotional eating has me now. Bigger than I want to be. I don't always enjoy the food.

Younger Self: But you would enjoy the Little Debbie treat. Brings back some good childhood memories. If you had my metabolism, you wouldn't even think about it.

Current Self: Okay, you talked me into it. Give me the Little Debbie's from my childhood.

Younger Self: Well, no. You have to buy Little Debbie's in your time. I'm just a visual reminder.

Current Self: Yeah, but the 2015 version has high-fructose corn syrup and doesn't taste nearly as good as what I used to love.

Younger Self: That's way over my head. I'm a kid. I run around and eat whatever I can.

The conversation would revolve around Twinkies and Hostess products since they were relevant in my childhood. Regular readers know of my love for Canadian Twinkies back when they did taste like the snack cakes of my childhood.

If you were into Little Debbie's and you miss them, the 2015 version of Little Debbie's isn't a trip back to your childhood. The girl on the box is the same, but what is inside the box isn't the same.

I've wanted a time machine to go back and have the soft drinks of my youth, the Kentucky Fried Chicken (not KFC) where you had to wait for 5-7 minutes for your food to be freshly cooked and that dark brown color of the chicken skin that you can't get now. My parents wanted to go back to the days before Kentucky Fried Chicken of their college years, the actual restaurant Harlan Sanders had in Corbin, KY. They aren't getting their "Kentucky Fried Chicken" and I'm not getting my Kentucky Fried Chicken version either.

We could easily have a debate over whether adults of a certain age should be eating that much extra dessert, even for nostalgia. I would argue that if you could have the childhood version of Twinkies, Little Debbie's, KFC, 7UP, or your childhood favorite, you should have that if only to remind you of what we have today.

When Michelle Obama wanted to reduce the childhood obesity rate, the mark she set was what the obesity rate was in the 1970s. There are numerous factors involved as to why obesity levels have risen, but the junk food of the 1970s was better for you than a lot of the junk food now.

We now live in a society where people take pictures of what they eat. We use the pictures to remind us of what we ate. I would love to go back and take some pictures with our "futuristic" smartphones of the food from my childhood. I would love to go back and have some of that food again.

But I can't. That food doesn't exist and there is no time machine. I do have great memories of eating junk food from my childhood, and I loved not having to think about calories back then.

In the donuts commercial, the little girl has a line at the end: "You're going to pay for that." She means money, but could be applied to calories and high-fructose corn syrup.

Those days are over. You can't go home. Have nostalgia for what once was, but live in the moment, create new food memories, and don't get bullied by food companies with false nostalgia substitutions. Hold out for the real thing, real memories of better tasting junk food gone by in time.

You do have to get over the stigma of drinking milk made by Coca-Cola. That does sound disturbing.

Fairlife offers some key advantages, so much so that we couldn't help but try the product. We tested the milk against a milk product comparable in terms of price: organic milk. We sampled whole milk versions of both for a fair comparison.

In my world, there are two major reasons to use milk: by itself and in cereal.

Fairlife by itself does have an aftertaste. My palate can tell the difference between Fairlife and organic milk. In a taste test straight up, organic milk would win 10 times out of 10. The taste difference isn't that significant but there is a difference.

We tried both milk products in cereal: 1 cup Grape-Nuts with 8 oz. of milk. The difference was similar but a lot less noticeable. Though we didn't try Fairlife in a smoothie, we can't imagine we would notice a difference.

With the extra protein and calcium, the better comparison might be Fairlife to regular yogurt or Greek yogurt. The yogurt, especially the Greek version, offers significant bacterial advantages over milk, even Fairlife. A cup of Fairlife would be a lot easier to consume to get 13 g of protein versus a cup of regular or Greek yogurt.

Fairlife offers 6 g of sugar in a serving vs. 12 g of sugar in milk. The company says the filtering process reduces the sugars. Since Fairlife has no lactose, and lactose is milk sugar, why are there 6 g of sugar?

Lactase enzyme has been added. This would account for the 6 g of sugar while not having lactose. Those who are lactose intolerant could handle this product because lactase is not lactose (one letter difference).

The 2% chocolate version goes from 24 g of sugar to 12 g of sugar. Fairlife makes up for the "lack of sweetness" by adding artificial sweeteners sucralose and acesulfame potassium.

Though I detected an aftertaste in the regular version, that is not the same aftertaste that you get from the artificial sweeteners.

If you are buying regular mainstream milk, the cost factor for Fairlife, regular yogurt, Greek yogurt, and organic milk may limit your purchase of any of these products. Soy milk and almond milk — different beasts entirely — also would be cost prohibitive. You'll have to drink more milk to make up the difference.

Those that can afford an upgraded milk, those who appreciate a decent tasting lactose-free milk, and those who only drink milk every so often. Fairlife's saving grace is that it's very shelf-stable. Whatever you might think about what longer shelf life means for a food product, American consumers eat that up, literally.

The Fairlife vs. organic milk battle came at a good time. I've been using almond milk as an occasional source of "milk" but bemoaning the loss of protein. Am also not thrilled with the amount of water needed to get us the almond milk, especially with droughts in California.

Soy milk offers the protein of regular milk but you have to ensure you are getting GMO-free soy milk. A shelf-stable version of milk with more protein that is actually milk is tempting as a supplement to other variations of milk.

The ultimate answer to which form and variety of milk that you choose comes down to how you use milk. Fairlife will never replace mainstream milk in a lot of households because regular milk is cheaper and often used as a loss leader at convenience and grocery stores.

Fairlife won't replace almond milk and soy milk for those who don't want to consume an animal product. Fairlife won't taste as good as organic milk nor offer the advantages of organic milk.

But Fairlife isn't the creepy evil Frankenstein image some are portraying. Fairlife is for occasional use where a burst of real milk satisfies a need over a long period of time.

February 13, 2015

When looking for a sweetheart, looks are going to matter. When looking for fruits and vegetables, ugly is in.

Last month on a business trip, we got plenty of food for breakfast and lunch. The fruits all looked good. I took a red apple. Beautiful, shiny, the kind of red apple that a child gives to the teacher in a heartwarming commercial.

When I bit into the apple, the apple tasted like it was grown … from very far away.

Looks can be deceiving.

The apple is a prime example of fruits and vegetables that have to look a certain way for consumers to want to buy that produce. So grocery stores are under pressure to display only that fruit and vegetables, rejecting perfectly good produce based purely on looks.

We've seen several recent stories about organizations giving new life to less than physically ideal produce. In a society where some aren't getting enough produce, due to access or money or both, the match fits like a jigsaw puzzle.

While we extoll the virtures of farmers markets, the vendors often fall into the same trap. To be fair, their excellent-looking produce tastes better than the handsome fruit and vegetables in mainstream grocery stores. Farmers will bring their more homely fruit and vegetables with them in boxes alongside the tables with the better-looking stuff. Ask nicely and chances are you will get a bounty for cheaper than the going rate for the more handsome produce.

Canning tomatoes involves the insides of the tomatoes, specifically removing the outside skin as part of the process. The tomatoes that you can truly can be horrific looking as long as they taste good.

We buy food based on color and prettiness. Fruits and vegetables really are the "girl next door." You want quality and value even if they aren't the kind of beautiful that end up on runways and fashion magazine covers.

Heirloom varieties are not pretty. Not pretty at all. Boy they deliver a great taste.

Mainstream grocery stores don't sell heirloom produce or purple potatoes. Not that people don't want them, but they're so different from traditional norms.

You certainly don't want ugly fruit that doesn't taste good, but ugly is fine if the taste is good.

We also have to adjust our expectations for out-of-season fruit. You can find quality apples out of season but they won't be shiny red like the kind you imagine Snow White got from the evil Queen.

If you are still reluctant, if looks are that important to you, start out slow. Put ugly fruit into a smoothie. Take ugly vegetables and pulse them into a soup. Those overripe bananas that are really getting ugly: put them in the freezer to make banana bread. Once you realize the beauty of ugly, you can move on to improve situations where looks are more visible.

Loving fruits and vegetables means taking them for their good points and bad points. If loving fruits and vegetables is difficult for you or you find yourself on the sidelines far too often, open yourself up. Embrace beauty even if it isn't obvious. You just might find that fruits and vegetables are more attractive when you get to know the goodness and taste they bring into the relationship of the diet.

There is no right way to finding the balance of food, just your way. My typical breakfast is whole wheat spaghetti with homemade sauce, sautéed mushrooms, and a naturally low-fat Italian cheese sprinkled on top. Works for me.